


mazel ra, mazel tov

by glassbones



Series: you can't see it with your eyes, hold it in your hands, this thing called love [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2430041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassbones/pseuds/glassbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>University!AU. Chilton meets Hannibal on his first year in Maryland State University</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> sad lonely Jewish boys are my favourite kind of boys

Afterwards, both of them will remember this careful slide into love with a peculiar sort of fondness.

As it usually happens, at some point the memories of a better, happier time will become the only things that keep them from falling apart and away.

This is how these memories were made.

* * *

Their first summer together (the word still doesn't sit quite right with Frederick, for reasons unknown) is hot and humid. Both he and Hannibal are too lazy and sweaty to do much other than taking countless cold baths and drinking lukewarm beer in the kitchen of the flat they rent.

He's nothing like, well, like _anyone_ Frederick've ever met before. Being around Hannibal feels like explorers must have felt upon looking at the New World for the first time, landscapes unknown, lands not yet conquered. It's as if all his previous human interactions suddenly don't count.

* * *

Frederick tries to memorize the planes of Hannibal's face because that's what they do in every romcom he's ever seen but it's harder than he anticipated and his memory isn't that good. He ends up with details and pieces and bits filed away in his mind: the colour of Hannibal's eyes, the way he squints when sun is shining directly in his face, the face he makes when drinking the cheapest cognac they could find.

He is getting good at learning Hannibal's body and the way it works; getting good at reading his face like one would at reading a book in a foreign language.

He tries and tries until it becomes routine; practices his motions until, figuratively speaking, he moves with a certain grace; a pigeon returning home at the end of every flight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after literal years of having abandoned this fic, i decided to pick it up somewhat. so far, the only thing i did was edit five tiny chapters into one normal-sized chapter, but hopefully more will be added soon. cheers

Frederick doesn't remember his school days very well.

They were nothing to speak of, honestly. Bullies. _Mami_ and the general struggle of growing up in a half-Cuban, half-Jewish family (noisy _and_ nosy relatives). The constant dilemma of having both Catholic and Jewish upbringing (Frederick never really believed in God, anyway). More bullies. The lonely adolescence filled with biology homework and Tolkien books (he still knows _A Elberet Gilthoniel_ by heart, even though fantasy books aren't really his thing any more. Old habits die hard).

Thing is, none of this was his choice.

He chose medicine because his father (an angry, brunet Jew with a mop of jet-black hair) wanted him to. He told Frederick, in a scary, intimidating way that he always told Frederick things with, that he should become a surgeon. So that he could help the poor girl Rosa with her kidney problem. Quote-unquote.  
Frederick didn't want to help the poor girl Rosa, but he didn't really want to not be a surgeon either. He applied to he University of Maryland three years later.

His childhood is somewhat of a blur.

* * *

Moving in the dorm is an as horrid an affair as moving in gets. He ends up packing two boxes of his stuff (books, mostly) and getting shouted at by at least three different relatives.

Some part of him doesn't understand why he's doing it; a different, bigger part of him thinks he shouldn't be doing it at all. Frederick is still uncertain whether medicine is the right choice (whether he wants to spend four to thirteen years studying it). Anyway, choices have been made, farewells have been bid, a friend has picked Frederick and his two boxes up at three.

He doesn't worry about his future much, not then. It seems easy and certain, as most things do when you're young: Frederick will finish his undergraduate degree, will apply to the medical school and then conquer the world. Nothing is impossible, nothing is unattainable.

He gets lost twice before finding his dorm room, but it still doesn't make the smile come off his face.

* * *

University went not quite swimmingly but passably. The first semester was a piping hot mess and Frederick cried at more than one point during the midterms, but that's university for you. Piping hot mess is okay, piping hot mess is something he can work with.

Uncertainty, though, is way worse. The tense, nervous kind of uncertainty that eats away at your nerves until it becomes all you can think of.

Frederick isn't sure where he stands with his roommate. Hannibal, the tall gaunt fellow with the sharpest cheekbones Frederick had ever seen. He's (Eastern?) European and has that striking quality to him that makes heads turn. Is probably flirting with him. Definitely flirting with him judging by the augmentative amount of double entendres.  
Thing is, he doesn't mind. The attention is rather welcome, and, if Frederick is being honest with himself, he wouldn't mind hooking up with the guy either. It's the ambiguity that's killing him, he muses, thumbing through an anatomy textbook.

"Food for thought," says Hannibal, passing him a bowlful of what looks like entirely too complicated food. Honestly.

Frederick doesn't mind waiting, though, not even a little bit, so that's what he does.

* * *

After a few months, they drift into a not-quite-friendship; an unspoken agreement: Hannibal loans Frederick his things and in return Frederick doesn't make Hannibal hate him _too_ much.

They are still dancing around the possibility of becoming an item, Frederick supposes (even though he's not sure anyone still uses the term).

Hannibal lends Frederick his textbooks and helps him learn a memory technique when Frederick spends a whole week trying to memorize the cranial nerves.

Hannibal buys him cigarettes when Frederick doesn't have the money.

Hannibal is, Frederick understands to his surprise while hurriedly smoking outside the lecture hall, being _friendly_ with him. It baffles Frederick to think why Hannibal would consider him, of all people, worth befriending (even though he has no doubt why the man is attracted to him. And no self-esteem issues, either, thank you very much).  
All in all, Hannibal is a very baffling man.

It continues like that for a while; Frederick's GPA comes crashing down hard (he considers himself lucky for keeping it above the 2.00 (barely) and managing to withdraw from Anesthesiology before he got an FN); Hannibal's grades are immaculate as ever. They keep dancing around the possibility of becoming an item.

Everything is fucking dandy.

* * *

Frederick is desperate enough to drag Hannibal to a family dinner, still feeling like the odd one out in the boisterous chaos that is his father's _mishpacha_.

"Is he the cute one you were talking about?" his older cousin Dinah asks. She's Frederick only gay relative, at least that he knows about, with her coppery-red hair in a messy braid and tiny freckles spattered across her light-brown skin.

The family was utterly scandalized when she introduced her girlfriend, mostly because she was gentile and not because she was, well, a girl.

"Shut your trap Dinah, I'm not out. And he's not a.. boyfriend," Frederick is downright furious (with her and himself); he doesn't know why.

"But you want him to be," she doesn't quite ask, smirking in her cup.

"What is going on," his grandmother pipes in, because _obviously_ it's unthinkable that anything can go on without her participation.

"Freddie's got a sweetheart," Dinah joyously proclaims.

"Thank you very much. _Todah_ ," there is no escaping this now. Frederick sighs. He tries to catch Hannibal's attention from across the room but he seems to be immersed in a conversation with one of Frederick's numerous uncles.

"Why, this is wonderful. _Zeyde_!" his grandmother calls out to her husband, " _Zeyde_ , come here. Frederick's got a sweetheart."

"My dear boy," his grandfather bustles in. He's positively ancient, with a nose which Frederick unfortunately seemed to inherit sticking out of his long grey beard. The old man has a twinkle in his eyes that Frederick has come to be wary of. "Such good news! Who is the lucky girl?"

" _Dreck_ ," Frederick mutters. " _Ver derharget_ ," he halfheartedly adds when Dina snickers.

"Come off it, _zeyde_ ," he adds in a louder voice. "I haven't even told her yet." Hannibal watches him from where he stands with curious eyes; it seems that he has an idea what's going on.

He spends the next hour warding off his nosy relatives and eluding their questions, like  _whether the girl's goy_ and _how does she look_ and _where did he meet her_. Thankfully, no one finds him bringing Hannibal there suspicious. 

The aforementioned seems weirdly amused by Frederick's fluster.

"No, nothing," he quickly says, suddenly preoccupied with his shoes, when Frederick asks him what's so funny. "Your family is just so.. loud."

"I like it though," he quickly adds.

"You haven't met my mother's side yet," Frederick replies.

"Am I going to?"

"Yes. If you want to, I mean. I'd like you to."

"I'm rather looking forward to it."

If the ensuing silence is tense and laced with something that neither of them could pinpoint, if there is a hidden depth to the way Hannibal looks at Frederick or the way Frederick smiles at Hannibal, it goes unnoticed. The evening suddenly doesn't seem quite so dreadful.


End file.
